of self described progressives supported this bill. Moveon.org raised over $5 million to primary those democratic representatives who opposed this legislation (which shook Stupak loose). Howard Dean supported this legislation and led rallies in the capital. Roger Moore supports this legislation.

If anyone bothers to read the legislation the historic import of the bill is readily apparent. The immediate benefits, that begin the day Obama signs the legislation will have tremendous life saving benefits for the sickest Americans. Healthcare will be provided to an additional 31 million people over the next four years. Psychologically the fact is the United States Government is responsible for the provision of healthcare, and healthcare is a right of all Americans.

As a bonus, the entire student loan program was nationalized, with all student loan lending originating with the Federal Government, with a cost savings of 20% or more to students. All fees and excess profits from private lenders for student loans is now illegal.

David Frum also lamented the fact that Republicans listened to their loony fringe right and walked away from this legislation. He lamented the fact that Republicans can likely no recover from this disaster FOR THEM.

Here is why Frum is so dejected:

If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

This win for Democrats will energize the very loony fringe right base that will make Republicans even more irrelevant. The win cannot be underestimated. Obama will begin to take on an air of invincibility, and his persistence will weaken opposition going forward.

Next up - Immigration Reform

Bullshit. Time to keep fighting. Republicans and their corporate masters love nothing better than an overconfident, complacent Democratic adversary, one that is lulled into inaction by the whines and moans of the temporarily defeated.

Today is Monday, the day after the "Republican Waterloo." Guess who's on TV? Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, and the rest of Rupert's Flying Monkey Circus. Let me know if it sounds like the monkeys have given up.

Meanwhile, on the radio, Savage Weiner and his ilk will continue to rave about the encroachment of communism/socialism/fascism/liberalism to an audience of political zombies that doesn't know or care that Medicare is a government program, you just better keep your dirty government hands off it.

Meanwhile, birdcages and dead fish continue to be decorated with more flying monkey bi-products like the Wall Street Journal, which you can be sure will toe the company line as to the effects of Obama's very modest first step towards universal coverage.

Speaking of corporations, they now can spend unlimited money on political campaigns. Democrats in their wisdom have done absolutely nothing about the latest demented proclamation by the Supreme Clowns' Gang of Five.

As long as there is a corporate media, a corporate party and people willing to sell their votes, there will be a singularly resilient conservative movement. They may change their name to Nice Kitty, but the movement and the party will always be run by cynical crooks. And it will always be supported by guys like Rupert Murdoch.

A monster like that cannot die, so we better stay in the fight.
.
Cows get milked, rubes get bilked,
And fat cats dine on fools and cream.

... then it is pretty clear that this was a victory for the Democrats no matter how flawed the bill is.

I sincerely hope that Robert Reich is right in that this will change the public perception of the usefulness of the Federal government.

Overall - although I am grossly generalizing here - Americans have a deeply ambivalent and neurotic relationship to their central government. Anything that helps to make this a bit more healthy and brings it a bit closer to a democratic normality is a good thing.

Millions of people may now have access to health care who otherwise wouldn't. What will their premiums be? For everyone else, will their premiums go down or at least stabilize? Lifetime limits on costs are going away, which is good, but the health insurance industry is still going to act as gatekeeper over the definition of usual and customary care vs. experimental treatments. Who is going to police the health insurance companies? They are still going to expect their 15% ROEs.

For David Frum to be right about this being a Republican Waterloo, the average person is going to have to see immediate changes that benefit them personally, and these changes are then going to have to persist. This is still a pretty big challenge for the Obama administration, and the only way he ultimately will be successful here is if he has proven to the insurance companies that the glory days of huge profits and high stock prices are over. Judging by how successful Obama was with convincing the banks to scale back their bonuses and profits, I doubt either the insurance companies or big pharmaceuticals are going to be acting any differently.

Sausage is suing the healthcare bill for defamation.

That was one fugly process.

My marker for Obama was whether he'd get a health care bill with a public option. He didn't. A year ago passage of some sort of health care reform seemed inevitable, and not a tremendous challenge. Only a year of dithering and bipartisaning and gangs of wankers and pre-compromising and, frankly, failure to put forward something simple and popular jeopardized it.

The bill's more good than bad, but it isn't what we should have gotten. It isn't what we voted for.

Not EPIC FAIL, but FAIL nonetheless. And I very much doubt this is the Repubs Waterloo, either. The Dems passed Romneycare, and assumed responsibily for the U.S. healthcare system for the next 3 years.

this was a battle between Republicans and Democrats.

It never was, not for a single moment (that is - unless you think this all happened completely by accident, everybody in Obama's strategy team believed the Republicans would play nice and vote their conscience rather than sticking to rote obstructionism, and Obama's team "got lucky" and passed this by blind chance).

"Zero Republican votes" was a foregone conclusion; that strategy was stated overtly at the beginning of Obama's tenure. This was almost completely a battle between the right and left wings of the Democratic Party (or, defined in absolute rather than local terms, the "hard right" and "moderate" wings, since the Democratic Party contains maybe two or three people recognizable as "left" from an international perspective). The necessary battles were fought there and that's where the necessary compromises were made.

It wasn't loaded with concessions to win the support of Republicans. It contained exactly as many compromises as were needed to gain the support of the Democratic Hard Right in order be able to pass this without a single Republican vote. And once you've grasped that - judging from the narrowness of the internecine victory, that bill didn't contain as much as a single unnecessary compromise.

Frum sees the enormity of what just happened; he grasps the thoroughness with which the right has aided and abetted its own defeat. It ain't the bill itself, which has good features but really is pretty obviously a bloated piece of crap that needs immediate fixes - it's the assumptions the bill enshrines. The Overton Window has been moved, the social fabric has been irrevocably altered, and this will swiftly become the same kind of "third rail" that Social Security has been for generations. The fixes will happen.

On a side note - I'm just laughing my ass off at the way student loans were just nationalized as part of the package, to practically no fanfare at all. That's just utterly brilliant strategy - can you imagine what would have happened if that had been introduced as separate legislation? That'll breed some new Democrats for the future - maybe even amongst erstwhile College Republicans :D

IMHO lot of folks have been guilty of seriously underestimating Obama - this is some of the most masterful "big picture" political strategy I have witnessed going down in real-time in my life :D

The passing of the Health Care bill is likely a confidence booster for Obama. Let's hope that the added wind in his sail will be enough to settle the Israeli/Palestinian problem once and for all.

I know, one can only hope!

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

If this was such a defeat for the insurance industry and a victory for the American people, someone please explain why health related stocks rallied like they did today?

But hey, it was worth it to through our mothers, wives, sisters, girlfriends and just regular old friends with the female bits under the bus (even if it was just symbolic), wasn't it. There was a political victory to be had!

USA Today, By Susan Page, March 23

WASHINGTON — Americans by 9 percentage points have a favorable view of the health care overhaul that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, a notable turnaround from surveys before the vote that showed a plurality against it.

By 49%-40% those surveyed say it was "a good thing" rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill. Half describe their reaction in positive terms, as "enthusiastic" or "pleased," while about four in 10 describe it in negative ways, as "disappointed" or "angry."

The largest single group, 48%, calls the bill "a good first step" that should be followed by more action on health care. An additional 4% also have a favorable view, saying the bill makes the most important changes needed in the nation's health care system.

Vandals hit at least five Dem offices nationwide, threaten to ‘assassinate’ children of pro-reform lawmakers.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that several Democratic offices around the nation had been vandalized in the days surrounding the House health care vote. Vandals have struck the Tuscon office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), the Monroe County Democratic Committee headquarters in upstate New York, Rep. Louise Slaughter’s (D-NY) Niagara Falls office, the Knox County Democratic headquarters in Ohio, and the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita, KS. The local Rochester ABC affiliate now has more information on the upstate NY vandalism, including an assassination threat against the children of lawmakers who voted for health reform:

No one was inside when the brick was hurled through the Democratic Patry Headquarters on University Avenue. Attached was a note quoting conservative Barry Goldwater: “Exremism [sic] in defense of liberty is no vice”. [...]

[Rep. Louise] Slaughter has been at the center of the push for reform. Last Thursday she received a chilling recorded message at her campaign office. “Assassinate is the word they used…toward the children of lawmakers who voted yes.”

The FBI is now investigating.